


Tastes Like Freedom

by LunaDeSangre



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-15 12:25:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3447107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaDeSangre/pseuds/LunaDeSangre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Continuing prison <i>romances</i> after one half gets paroled and the other not should probably be something impossible. Unless the impossible in question is named Miguel Alvarez, and simply breathes loyalty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sheer Fucking Need

Perhaps how they end up together is some kind of twist of fate, some form of revenge on Ryan from the universe or some shit like that. Doesn’t matter. What matter is they’re together and Ryan loves it. Every fucking second. Every second of fucking. And if that makes him a fag, well, fuck it. He likes it up the ass, so what? He’s still not someone to be messed with, and everyone knows that. People in his way still have a bad tendency of mysteriously ending up in a pine box, even if he’s in love with a man. And he’s happy, actually _happy_ , _in Oz_ —until Miguel gets paroled.

Oh sure, he’s happy for Miguel, Miguel who hates small spaces so much being out there in the fresh air and sunshine, hell, even in the freezing cold and pouring rain—but Ryan’s a fucking selfish bastard at heart, and it’s torture to think Miguel is out there _without him_.

( _Without him_ is the most important part: Ryan’s pretty sure he wouldn’t mind spending the rest of his days locked in the hole as long as he had Miguel with him. Miguel might go mad— _would_ go mad for sure, but Ryan wouldn’t, and he would become Miguel’s whole universe—which would only be fair, Ryan thinks, as Miguel is _Ryan’s_ whole fucking universe.)

Miguel making parole, while the best thing for him, has been Ryan’s recurring nightmare since he realized just how much he cared for the Latino—not that Miguel ever found out about it, not really. Guessed Ryan would miss him like he’d miss his fucking heart if it was ripped out of his chest, yeah. Realized Ryan was secretly hoping he wouldn’t make parole? No, no way in hell Ryan was allowing him to find that out. He’d been supportive instead. Forced himself to smile. Stole Miguel’s bandana. Extracted promises of visits and postcards, which Ryan only half-believed, even though he knows Miguel meant them—at the time, at least. Ryan can’t allow himself to hope too much. Miguel’s _free_ : whatever he felt for Ryan in here, it’s only a memory out there.

“You’ll miss my cock,” Miguel had tried to joke the night before he left—to defuse the atmosphere because Ryan had whispered he would miss him right when Miguel was fucking him—mouthing Ryan’s neck while Ryan wrapped his arms and legs around him and just tried to get more of him. 

He hadn’t been able to joke back—it was all he could do to stop himself from fucking crying like a girl. “I’ll miss a lot more than your cock,” he’d just said, and he’d stolen Miguel’s breath away so he didn’t have to answer.

But it’s true—all of it, actually. Ryan misses Miguel, that’s a given—but he misses Miguel’s cock as well. He would never have been able to guess he would end up liking it up the ass so much in the first place, considering how touchy and paranoid he’d been, but once they’d started _actually fucking_ Ryan never wanted to look back. Never wanted it to stop. 

Miguel’s under his fucking skin worse than Gloria ever was—more than that, Miguel’s imprinted on his fucking soul. Ryan can’t get him out—he doesn’t even want to try, but he _knows_ that if he did, he’d only fail spectacularly. Miguel is a constant distraction even when he’s not there: Ryan can’t stop thinking about him, ever. He can compartmentalize, can reign it all into a corner of his mind to not loose sight of his surroundings during the day, but at night, Miguel is all he can think about.

He thinks about Miguel’s dark eyes, so impossibly deep most of the time, and that rare spark of joyful life in them that’s for Ryan alone, in private, _because he’s the one who put it there_. He thinks about Miguel’s cocky strut and those long fingers stroking his stomach in maddening little circles, those perfect abs and those unfinished tattoos—and he wonders if they’re finished yet or if he has new ones and whether Ryan will ever see them (and who else might see them, but that’s a thought leading to madness). Miguel’s dazzling smile and cute crooked teeth and that clever tongue in more ways than one—Miguel’s cheeky sense of humor and somehow superhuman ability to kiss Ryan’s brain to complete mush without needing to breathe. Miguel’s hot mouth around his cock, Miguel’s warm salty skin against his own and Miguel’s cock inside him, stretching him and filling him and driving him _insane_.

(He doesn’t even think about finding someone else: it’s Miguel he wants, and only Miguel, no one else would be able to even compare.) 

So yeah, he misses Miguel _and_ his fucking cock. Misses being fucked to sweet oblivion every night. Nowadays, all he gets up his ass is the fucking strip search, and it’s not like Ryan fucking enjoys that: he wants to cut the hack’s fingers off, nevermind that the poor bastard is just doing his job. And sometimes, when everyone is asleep, quietly hidden under his blanket, his own fingers, imagining Miguel’s. Wishing it _was_ Miguel, Miguel’s fingers, Miguel’s tongue and Miguel’s cock. Jesus. It gets him off so fucking fast—but he wants the real thing, so bad.

In his darkest moments, he thinks of ways to get Miguel back into Oz. Miguel’s staying clean, Ryan knows, too happy to be out of this hellhole. But he loves Ryan, still. Keeps coming, every week like clockwork, even though it’s been ten fucking months now, and he could find better things to do. Like a pretty girl, out there, sweet and soft and pliable. It’s what Ryan is the most terrified of, what he keeps half-expecting, desperately praying against—but no, Miguel still comes, and kisses him, right there in the visiting room, anyone watching be damned, all warm and wet, desperate and possessive, like he’s as starved as Ryan is. He tastes like rain, chocolate, nicotine, cotton candy. Like he’s bringing the outside world to Ryan on the tip of his tongue, to share it with him. It makes Ryan fucking _melt_. He’s ended up on Miguel’s lap quite a few times, wrapped tight around him, sucking Miguel’s tongue into his mouth until the guards yanked them apart. Threatened to not let Miguel visit anymore, the fucking heartless fuckers. So now Ryan behaves, mostly, because even if all they can do is kiss, Ryan needs this. Needs _him_. Needs him more than he can have him.

Getting Miguel sent back to Oz would probably be fucking easy: Ryan could set it up, frame him for something, and no one would ever know he had anything to do with it. Except Miguel. Who’s not a fool, knows exactly what Ryan is capable of, and can read him like an open book. He’d be back here, locked into closed spaces again, and he’d take _one look_ at Ryan and he’d _know _. And he'd stop loving him. And Ryan can’t have that. Ever. He can’t even imagine it, what he’d do if that happened. (He’d die.)__

So he does nothing—waits for Miguel to come again, gets as much kisses as he can, as much of him as he can, and dreams of him.


	2. Treasured Burning Wounds

The first time Miguel brought him clothes (three green shirts), they were completely new. They’re warm and comfy and Ryan likes them a lot, because not only they’re green, but Miguel gave them to him. Miguel’s left Ryan his comfy dark blue long-sleeved shirt when he got paroled—or to be more accurate, Ryan possessively held on to it until Miguel told him to keep it, amused. Ryan’s stolen his bandana too, and that he doesn’t wear, so he doesn’t need to wash it, and months after Miguel’s left it still smells a little like him. (Ryan sleeps with it, hiding it inside his pillow, among the lumps that pass for fluff. Every night, he takes it out and smells it, and imagines Miguel with him.)

So, the next visit after the shirts, when Miguel asked him if he liked them and whether he needed anything else, Ryan told him a sweater. And: “Wear it. Please. Actually, just give me one of yours.” Miguel gave him the one he was wearing right there and then, even though it was cold outside—and Ryan just fell in love with him all over again, hard and deep and swift, like a fucking bolt of lightening. He slept with his nose buried in the thing that night and the ones after—it was a long, long while before he managed to bring himself to wash it. Now it doesn’t smell like Miguel anymore, but it _feels_ like him, so Ryan wears it almost all the time.

Because, really, when it comes down to it, in the dreadful everyday Oz routine, traces of Miguel is all he has.


	3. Teasing Routine #847

Little by little, time passes. It doesn't really get better, but it also doesn't get worse: Miguel keeps coming. Ryan's become an expert in silently fingering himself off, though he probably would never admit that to even Miguel (unless the admission got him a long hard fuck, which he desperately fucking _needs_ ), and Miguel's basically a pro porn writer, with all the long explicit emails he sends Ryan. (And unless he's fucking around—cheating on Ryan—he's also probably getting carpal tunnel syndrome, with the emails Ryan always sends _back_ , all short and to-the-point but equally explicit, even downright filthy.)

Then Miguel's in the infirmary one day when Ryan gets there to work, wearing the outside male nurses' uniform as if there's nothing wrong with that picture at all.

Ryan stares. He might actually be gaping a little as well, until the hack that brought him there shoves him with a "O'Reily, quit staring at your fucking boyfriend and get to work." And normally Ryan would bite back, but right then he can't, because Miguel gives him that stupidly hot mischievous smile of his and walks past him with a needle tray. Ryan follows him very much like a lovesick puppy.

"Hold this," Miguel tells him in lieu of greeting, stopping besides a bed and shoving the needle tray in Ryan's hands. Ryan automatically does and Miguel takes the needle and bottle off it with apparently practiced ease.

"What are you doing here?" Ryan manages to somehow articulate. He meant to whisper it, but his voice breaks a little, and he glares and grimaces at the same time, staring slightly wide-eyed at Miguel still.

"I'm volunteering," Miguel replies, obviously trying for deadpan and failing, trademark infuriating little smirk coming out. "It's part of my cursus."

"Your _what_?"

Miguel almost snickers at him. "I'm taking classes, remember? This is going to count for them. Practical application of all the shit I've been studying."

That's right, Ryan remembers. Miguel wants to be a nurse (and only repeatedly rolled his eyes at how much Ryan laughed that only _chicks_ were nurses); he wants to help people. Ryan's been more worried he'd find a pretty girl in his class to think about anything else (besides that slight burning ache in his heart that keeps saying Miguel's good and Ryan's nothing but an unworthy rotten selfish soul). "Oh," he says dumbly. "Why here?"

Of course, the sick fuck on the bed (biker, by definition huge, hairy and naturally smelly) chooses precisely the moment Ryan's heart feels like it's trying to jump out of his throat to groan at them to "Shut the fuck up, you fags."

Ryan actually kind of growls. Miguel just winks at him and stabs the guy with the needle. And it really shouldn't be hot, but _it's Miguel_ , so of course it is. Ryan walks around with a boner for the rest of his shift, unable to leave Miguel's presence to do more than adjust himself, unwilling to waste even a few minutes away from him—and so of course, unable to do anything about it, there in the middle of the fucking infirmary. (He's in hell, he decides. But that's okay, because Miguel's _right there_. Even if he's the cause of Ryan's torture. Because really, Ryan'll take almost any kind of torture if it means he gets to see Miguel: not seeing him is simply the worse kind there can be.)

Very quickly, it's a new routine: Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Miguel's there in the infirmary when Ryan arrives (now impatiently rushing whichever hack is due to bring him), and still there when he has to leave (gets all but dragged out after he's cleaned, folded and fiddled with every tiny thing he can get his hands on in an attempt to stay longer). He continues visiting every Sunday, and that's the only time they touch at all (and kiss and pet and _clutch_ at each other), no matter how many times Ryan tries to lure Miguel into following him in supply closets at first.

It drives Ryan insane, seeing him so much without being able to touch him. But he understands if they got caught (and he knows just how very high the chances are they would be), Miguel wouldn't be let back in at all, would probably fail his classes or something—would definitely get in trouble. So Ryan settles for staring at him three days a week, and sitting on his lap on Sundays, pouring all his frustrations and needs in desperate kisses until they're yanked apart. He understands, but he doesn't have to like it.

And every night, alone again, he closes his eyes and dreams of nothing but riding Miguel's cock in every space that locks in this damn place.


End file.
